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The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

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Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#71

Post by sevensor »

maxsilver wrote: post #68
sevensor wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We needed better transit and affordable housing ten years ago too. Florida just didn't care at the time. That's what I think is missing -- a mea culpa for ignoring crucial urban issues and promoting the kind of growth that would muscle out the non-"creative" people a city needs to function. Big scare quotes for "creative", by the way. My other pet peeve with Florida is that he thinks creativity is the exclusive provi…

> (Florida needs to issue) a mea culpa for ignoring crucial urban issues and promoting the kind of growth that would muscle out the non-"creative" people a city needs to function To his credit, he did sort of do that, about a year ago. "I got wrong that the creative class could magically restore our cities, become a new middle class like my father's, and we were going to live happily forever after," Florida said. "I…

I was unaware of this statement, and I agree that it's to his credit to have said it. Personally I think he needs to keep saying it until he's righted the balance, but it's a start.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#72

Post by dgacmu »

tryitnow wrote: post #66
akanet wrote: post #2

The author's recommendations are certainly apt, though I wonder if he realizes how much of a political nightmare trying to get cities like Berkeley to build more housing is. Berkeley is probably the staunchest NIMBY city of the major Bay Area cities. The mayor and city council recently outright denied a simple rebuild of a house on Haskell St (heh) that would have added a couple extra units of housing. We believe thi…

I love what you're doing, so let me tell you what's holding me back from jumping on board. Traffic. You want more housing, but that almost always means more cars - and how do you handle that? But it's more than just traffic - broadly speaking it's the principle of Chesterton's fence ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._K._Chesterton#Chesterton.27... ). Before making rapid changes, let's understand why the status quo is…

Traffic is an important concern. If it doesn't take proposition 13 into account, it's probably not going to be as effective as it should. Prop 13 creates too many financial incentives not to relocate to be near your job -- part of the reason that California has become a commute nightmare [0]. It also creates too strong an incentive to hang on to empty property and not improve it. [1]

That said, increasing the housing density in some of those currently-suburban areas (around Google, Apple, and Facebook, for example) could help them transform into more viable urban areas, without an increase in car traffic.

[0] http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/files/2008-19151-1.p... " observed changes in commuting patterns in major metropolitan areas in California support that hypothesis. In particular, between 1980 and 1990, the number of workers in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles who commute outside the metropolitan statistical area to work increased 119 percent, 88 percent, and 80 percent, respectively. That is well above the growth in the number of similar commuters in other metropolitan areas across the nation, which generally ranged from 25 percent to 45 percent."

[1] http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/09/22/california_s_...

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#73

Post by ionwake »

arethuza wrote: post #47
matt4077 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany quite definitely lost WW2 and saw incomes rise even faster after the war: wid.world/solo.php#0/countriestimeseries/anninc_pall_992_i/US;DE/last/eu/k/p/yearly/a/false/1844.6039999999998/75000/curve/false "Winning a war" is surprisingly useless, economically. A higher minimum wage would certainly not create "mass unemployment". Most research points to unemployment remaining about the same. That's because there…

The Germans had their WW2 debts largely cancelled in 1953 to aid their industrial growth so that they could help oppose the Soviets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Agreement_on_German_Ext... This is currently a bit of a sore point with some Greeks...

Interesting I did not know this

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#74

Post by ionwake »

zucchini_head wrote: post #30
ionwake wrote: post #4

Please do correct me if I am wrong. But isn't the whole reason lower class job salaries increased in the USA was simply because they had just won a world war? I do not know enough about the reasons for affluence in the 50s, but surely it was in large part to success in the war? If so, how could one suggest the minimum wage is just raised without it causing mass unemployment in the present? I must be misunderstanding…

Well, a lot of historians say that the USA's economy flourished post-war not necessarily because they "won" it (hard to define concept these days), but because everybody else's manufacturing infrastructure was completely flattened. Why do you think the USA automobile market exploded post-war? It's because the two biggest automobile manufactures - Germany and Japan - were flattened to smouldering ashes and took around…

Simple and a great point thank you

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#75

Post by ionwake »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #25
aninhumer wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure how you think winning a war leads "simply" to higher wages? There were a lot of factors surrounding WW2 which contributed to the success of the US afterwards, but they're nowhere near as simple as the fact that they won. If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages.

> If anything, the most immediate outcome of the victory is a sudden influx of unemployed soldiers needing jobs, which causes downward pressure on wages. You had fewer soldiers coming back than you had shipping off. You also had worldwide demand for manufactured goods to meet, and Europe lost basically its entire infrastructure and nearly an entire generation of working age men.

Good points

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#76

Post by awkward »

firebird84 wrote: post #58
matt4077 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany quite definitely lost WW2 and saw incomes rise even faster after the war: wid.world/solo.php#0/countriestimeseries/anninc_pall_992_i/US;DE/last/eu/k/p/yearly/a/false/1844.6039999999998/75000/curve/false "Winning a war" is surprisingly useless, economically. A higher minimum wage would certainly not create "mass unemployment". Most research points to unemployment remaining about the same. That's because there…

For your last example, it could give someone the ability to liquidate their position (from the buyers of that stock), get $100 in cash to pay a plumber, or if you're arguing about their social class perhaps the last $100 of down payment needed to finance the new yacht they had built. That yacht-building also creates jobs. Most likely that stock is institutionally owned though, so it goes to a retirement fund redempti…

All of those examples happen with far less frequency, though. As measurable fact, paychecks get spent faster than increase in stock value is liquidated.

Re: The Unaffordable Urban Paradise

#77

Post by TulliusCicero »

maxsilver wrote: post #27
TulliusCicero wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're under attack because they make those cities unaffordable to most, they're a cash transfer from immigrants to the emplaced, from the young to the old. They're under attack because they can't possibly scale. They're under attack because they take more energy and are more hostile to walking, biking, and transit. They're under attack because they're not the natural outcome of people expressing preferences in the…

> (single family homes with reasonable space) they make those cities unaffordable, they can't possibly scale, they are more hostile to walking, biking, and transit. None of that is actually true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGbC5j4pG9w and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6SbFlZMbU Apartments are great for those who want them, but there's nothing wrong or anti-urban about family housing. You can easily give ever…

First off, Japanese SFHs are on incredibly tiny lots compared to how zoning works in most American cities.

But the bigger issue with your argument here is that much more of Japanese residential land in major cities is used for multi-family housing than single-family. I'm not saying we should not allow single-family homes to exist. I'm saying zoning currently allocates far too much land exclusively for them. Tokyo is a pretty terrible counter-example for that.

It's the same thing with cars. Nothing wrong with driving, American cities just make them hyper-dominant rather than one option among several.

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